Schools in Peru are still closed, and will finish out the school year (in December) this way. As you might imagine, that has affected the way we train teachers through Living Libraries. Despite a great learning curve for virtual training, I asked our team—Lucía, Nancy, and Julié—to share some specific stories of teachers who have grown throughout this year, and what they shared is encouraging. And one more thing…
My dear friend Jonathan Hanegan, missionary in Buenos Aires, Argentina, invited me to teach the first formal course his workshop is putting on. Two weeks ago today we started with the first of eight 2-hour sessions that I get to teach on my favorite topic of all time: The Mission of God. This is a virtual course, and the students are incredible: 40 students from 14 different countries in Latin America. Men and women who are servant-leaders in their churches, some who are preachers and ministers and others who serve as leaders, always wanting to continue learning and deepening their understanding of who God is and how we can be a part of God’s mission.
We are on day 144 (that's almost 5 months!!) of lockdown quarantine here in Arequipa. What this means is that you are only allowed to go out to buy essential items. This is supposed to cut down on the number of people out, the amount of time people spend out, all to decrease the amount of contact between people. However, because of the way of life here, it hasn’t worked exactly as the government hoped.
We have been living in a small apartment at this hotel since March 16 when the quarantine lockdown went into effect. At that time we had the HULA group here with us until they left two weeks later. After that Jeremy’s parents and siblings were with us for another two weeks and then headed back to the US on a repatriation flight. For the last 4 months it has been us and the Spanish teacher that came with HULA, Debora, and her daughter, Sira (7 years old). Also living at the hotel is the owner, Zenet, and her daughter, Nathalie (17 years old), and one hotel worker, Yulisa. We have become a family seeing as we have been locked in the hotel grounds together 24/7 for 5 months now. We have celebrated 4 birthdays, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Peru’s Independence Day together. Arequipa’s birthday, August 15, is right around the corner.
Here are a few of the books we've been enjoying and learning from lately. Note, these all link to the book on smile.amazon.com. If you don't support a charity through Amazon yet, please consider supporting CUDA with your purchase.
It’s mid-March. The school year is about to begin after January and February’s summer break. Families spend what they earned in February to buy school supplies for the beginning of classes in March. For CUDA, new libraries are in place. We have geared up for our biggest year yet, ready to work with 4 new schools and 2 second-year Living Libraries schools: 55 teachers and 1300 kids. And then the world falls apart.
In 5+ years in Peru, we have never lacked anything. You have supported us, prayed for us, sent us birthday cards and Christmas treats. You have visited us or sent a representative group to bless us. CUDA, our non-profit, has grown and some of you support that kingdom work there with monthly or end-of-year donations. When it looked like CUDA might not make budget in 2019 and I asked for help at the end of a long newsletter, we had $8,000 by the end of the week. God has been faithful. Your Epaphroditus-style generosity and sacrifice is beautiful and glorifies God. Every so often we get an email that leads to an unsolicited gift.
